MSI Big Bang-XPower II X79 Review – A World of Novelty Heatsinks
by Ian Cutress on February 25, 2012 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- X79
3D Movement Algorithm Test
The algorithms in 3DPM employ both uniform random number generation or normal distribution random number generation, and vary in various amounts of trigonometric operations, conditional statements, generation and rejection, fused operations, etc. The benchmark runs through six algorithms for a specified number of particles and steps, and calculates the speed of each algorithm, then sums them all for a final score. This is an example of a real world situation that a computational scientist may find themselves in, rather than a pure synthetic benchmark. The benchmark is also parallel between particles simulated, and we test the single thread performance as well as the multi-threaded performance.
Both single and multi-threaded performance is in the top half of the table, however almost all boards are within statistical variance on both tests.
WinRAR x64 3.93 - link
With 64-bit WinRAR, we compress the set of files used in the USB speed tests. WinRAR x64 3.93 attempts to use multithreading when possible.
Impressively the BBXP2 does well on our WinRAR test, coming in at under the golden three minute mark.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.2 - link
FastStone Image Viewer is a free piece of software I have been using for quite a few years now. It allows quick viewing of flat images, as well as resizing, changing color depth, adding simple text or simple filters. It also has a bulk image conversion tool, which we use here. The software currently operates only in single-thread mode, which should change in later versions of the software. For this test, we convert a series of 170 files, of various resolutions, dimensions and types (of a total size of 163MB), all to the .gif format of 640x480 dimensions.
For our FastStone test, the BBXP2 joins a group of boards near the top in at 56 seconds.
Sorenson Squeeze 6.0 - link
Sorenson Squeeze is a professional video encoder, complete with a vast array of options. For this test, we convert 32 HD videos, each a minute long and approximately 42 MB in size, to WMV 512KBps format. Squeeze can encode multiple videos at once, one for each thread.
In our Squeeze test, the board is about average compared to others we have tested.
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Iketh - Sunday, February 26, 2012 - link
I disagree. Onboard X-Fi is far better than the regular ALC codecs, and I'm saying that with my living room computer using a $160 shielded X-Fi PCIe card and my personal desktop using the Asus ROG. I can't tell the difference between the 2 using the same 5.1 setup.I'm also not touching Asus' sound solutions just based on reviews of their products at retailers. Granted, I haven't looked at every model from them.
I agree that I'd rather not have any sound solution on the motherboard, unless of course it's a full discreet solution integrated in the board. But like I said, I'm very happy with the X-Fi chip in the ROGs.
Iketh - Sunday, February 26, 2012 - link
Also, what daughter card are you speaking of? Asus has the X-Fi on the board, and that's on a micro-atx form factor.DanNeely - Sunday, February 26, 2012 - link
Intel NICs are more expensive than Marvell/Realtek NICs and very few people actually know enough to care.TerdFerguson - Saturday, February 25, 2012 - link
That the reviewer very mistakenly thinks that BIOS flashback, SSD caching, better fan controls, and an auto-overclock system are worth $70 alone illustrates how worthless his opinions and reviews are to me and to most users.OwnedKThxBye - Sunday, February 26, 2012 - link
You illustrate how worthless your opinion is by not being able to read the review correctly.The board looks great apart from the heatsinks. Love the review Ian.
Sabresiberian - Sunday, February 26, 2012 - link
The MSI mainboard is also capable of quad SLI, whereas the Asus board is not.As far as someone who likes to call himself "TerdFerguson" speaking for most other Anandtech users - I suggest your opinion of yourself is grossly over-inflated. The only fault that I find hear is that some Anandtech moderator hasn't required you to change your name to something less tasteless.
;)
IceDread - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
You do not care about micro stuttering do you? Using three graphic cards... no thanks.pandemonium - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link
Umm, what?"Amazingly, the three-way setup has a tremendous advantage over two cards in CrossFire."
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce...
Sabresiberian - Sunday, February 26, 2012 - link
It's good to see MSI producing top-level boards again. Most of my builds pre-Nehalem were based on MSI products, but my last 2 builds were not in part because MSI had nothing competitive to offer at the time (for my particular purposes). Good job MSI!;)
thetuna - Sunday, February 26, 2012 - link
"This is in comparison to the audio, which is only the ALC898"What's that X-Fi I see?